Rod Dreher (born February 14, 1967) is an American writer and editor. He is a senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative and author of several books, including How Dante Can Save Your Life.

Raised a Methodist, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993. He wrote widely in the Catholic press, but covering the Roman Catholic Church's child sex abuse scandal, starting in 2002, led him to question his Catholicism,[1] and on October 12, 2006, he announced his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.[2] At the time, Dreher had argued that the scandal was not so much a "pedophile problem", but that the "sexual abuse of minors is facilitated by a secret, powerful network of gay priests" referred to as the Lavender Mafia.[3]

On April 10, 2010, Dreher blogged about the abuse scandals (italics in the original):

They all did it – by which I mean, virtually the entire hierarchy is complicit to a greater or lesser degree in shuffling child-molesting priests around, or keeping them in some way in a position to commit their crimes. Why? Clericalism. The clerical class is what mattered most to these people, not the children and their families, to whom they were functionally indifferent... if anybody thinks Pope Benedict should resign, they should sober up and understand that there is almost certainly nobody under him who is untainted by this thing. This was the way the hierarchy operated for a very long time. At least this current pope seems to have at long last been enlightened about the scope of this catastrophe. But he is not doing enough to make it right. What is it going to take?[4]

In 2002, Dreher wrote an essay in National Review that explored a subcategory of American conservatism he defined as "granola conservatism", whose adherents he described as "crunchy cons."[5] He defined these individuals as traditionalist conservatives who believed in environmental conservation, frugal living, and the preservation of traditional family values. They also express skepticism about aspects of free market capitalism and they are usually religious (typically traditionalist Roman Catholics or conservative Protestants). Four years later, Dreher published a book that expanded upon the themes of this manifesto, Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party).[6]

He later wrote a blog at beliefnet.com with an emphasis on cultural rather than political topics.[1][7]

He was an editorial writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but left in late 2009 to become the publications director for the John Templeton Foundation.[11] On August 20, 2011, Dreher announced on Twitter that he was leaving the Templeton Foundation in order to return to full-time writing.[12] In 2013, Dreher published a book titled The Little Way of Ruthie Leming about his childhood in Louisiana and his sister's battle with cancer.[13] In 2015, Dreher published How Dante Can Save Your Life, a memoir about how reading Dante's Divine Comedy helped him after his sister's death.[14]